First, watch this:

Now roll your tongue back up.

The preceding was the first of a series of teaser episodes that will be released to promote Electronic Arts’ Swedish studio DICE’s next game, Battlefield 3. It’s been five years since Battlefield 2, and since that time Activision’s Call of Duty franchise has really moved in and taken over the war-sim shooter space (Call of Duty: Black Ops set obscene sales records, for example).

But it looks like DICE isn’t content to be outdone. Their new Frostbite 2 engine looks astounding, the combat pacing seems tight, and the area design is phenomenal. And the lighting…oh, the lighting! But all that aside, what really impresses is how the characters move. Seriously, watch them…they move almost exactly like you’d expect real people to move. It’s especially in the heads: notice how the characters’ heads turn independently, and in particular how the head turns to look before the character shifts directions.

There’s a reason for that: DICE borrowed the ANT character animation system from EA Sports‘ FIFA line of games. Which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense, actually…the dynamics of running, sparring soccer players can at least loosely be translated to soldiers on a battlefield, and EA Sports has spent nearly a decade working on their character motion control systems. Why not let another EA studio share the benefits of that work by adapting it for use in, in this case, a combat FPS?

Anyhow, other stuff:

This blog will probably be quite entertaining in the future…

If you like sci-fi, obscure doctor jokes, gratuitous Warhammer references, and “overabundant circumlocution”, consider adding Space Rubbish to your RSS reader.

(via)

Warren Spector gets his Duck Tales opportunity…kinda.

BOOM! Studios is issuing, this May, a new Duck Tales comic book series…written by Warren Spector. It’s not quite a video game, but I think we can all be pretty sure that Spector is now basically living his dream.

Remember when green-screening would require a supercomputer?

Yeah…now you can do it on your iPhone.

What to do if your identity gets stolen

Switched continues looking at what steps you can take when your life goes electronically wrong, and what you can do to prevent it from getting to that state.

Tonight’s post brought to you by Elmer Fudd’s worst nightmare:

Be vewwy quiet...